Vinyasa = kinetic chain?

[shadow]

Asana is a single posture, focusing on structure... right?

So is vinyasa like a short collection of asanas combined together? Like one of the Prasara flows can be broken down into several vinyasas?

From my experience in the past with "power" or vinyasa based yoga... the vinyasa was always refered to as that sequence of plank -> up dog -> down dog that was repeated after every other asana or short series.

How is it that vinyasa can be described as linking breath with structure? Does vinyasa happen within an asana as you begin breathing into it? Or does it happen with a movement from asana to asana?
If it is the latter, I can see that if there is a short sequence that breath can become much more conscious as it is not being overwhelmed or lost in the flow of what I consider Prasara to be.

And if so where is the definite disctinction between that and Prasara?

I take it that Prasara occurs within the longer sequence as what happens is the individual postures are forgotten about to an extent in that rather than a collection of postures, it becomes a flow of movement... it is not a flow from posture to posture because the postures are a part of the flow, not seperate from it.

I contrast this with my prior experience and also with viewing examples of other yoga... in that despite the attempts to link the asana (with that common vinyasa or even other simple linking) it looks (and felt) choppy and seems more as a collection of asana than an actual flow.

I hope my questions are clear enough.

Thanks.